“Is that what thou didst expect?” Satan asked. “Eternal fire, and the demons of Hell forking souls into furnaces like so much coke for burning?”
“No. Ridiculous, on the face of it. But…”
“The damned are all around thee.”
“Those creatures on the glassy plain. Lost creatures, aye. But I saw I see no souls in torment, Father of lies.”
“Seest thou not thyself? Seest thou not Satan and his angels, then?”
“Am I damned? I feel no fire upon my skin, or on my soul.”
“Fire cannot kiss thy soul, who was Christofer Marley. Such conceits are for simpler hearts than thine. Thou art in Hell, and have been every day of thy life since thy God abandoned thee in a little room in France. And thou, brave soul, reconstructed Him into a God that could love thee. But thou hast not the power to change God.”
Kit closed his eyes, without turning. He felt the cup of a warm wing against his shoulder, and knew Satan came to stand beside him. “Haven’t I?”
“Perhaps thou art more powerful than I.” Lucifer admitted, and Kit studied his profile. Leander. Adonis. Apollo. His body straight as Circe’s wand. Eyes as blue as Heaven looked on the darkness, unflinching, and then turned to regard Kit from beneath lashes frosted in gold.
“I have not succeeded. Is it not what children wish, a father’s acceptance? His love?”
“Yes,” Kit said, into a hollowness that echoed. “If Hell is not torment,” he asked, knowing the answer, “then what is Hell?” If I fell, would he come after me? On those white, white wings? Or would I fall forever, like…
Kit stepped away from the abyss, retreated to the center. Like him.
“Sweet child.” Lucifer said. And then said what Kit had always known he would. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Thinkst thou that I that saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of heaven am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul.” Kit’s own words, given into the mouth of a seductive devil. Mephostophilis. And again, the angel smiled. “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place. But where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. And to be short, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not heaven.”
That agony in his chest must be his inability to breathe, Kit thought. The burning in his eyes, the taint of Hell.
“O child.” Lucifer said into Kit’s silence, “how canst thou deny what thou thyself hast written, and known to be Truth as it was revealed to thee?.”
Kit scrubbed his hands on his breeches, as if to remove some rusty stain. He tried to ignore the Devil circling, wings fallen into expansion like a courting hawk’s, but Lucifer caught his wrists and drew him close, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. “Hell,” he said, “is where God is not.”
I am damned.His knees rattled. The Devil’s strength held him up. “Thou art as God made thee.” Wry, startling humor. “As are we all.”
“What could such as you want with such as me? “We have our reasons. Thou livest with demons that fright thee more than I do, and so for that which thou art as much as that which thou dost carry inside thee, as I have healed thy scars, I will give thee the power to destroy thine enemies.”
“That which thou dost carry inside thee?”
“Power.”
“How?”
“Why,” the Devil answered, his fingers dimpling Kit’s skin, “Be thou a warlock, who was Christofer Marley. I shall make of thee a witch, as I have bewitched men before thee. As thou hast said … Tis only sodomy.”
“Only.” But he tasted something on the word. Revenge. “Lover.” the Devil whispered. “Brother. Thou givest me that only which isalready mine.”
Kit closed his eyes on the glorious eyes, the broad white wings, the twist of fire and purity that was the Prince of God’s Angels, and whispered yes. Lucifer smiled, and this kiss tasting of whiskey and smoke began with Kit’s lips and ended there after an exploratory interval, during which clothing vanished by magic under the touch of caressing hands. Kit pressed both palms to the fallen angel’s smooth-muscled back, clawing fingers digging for purchase against the base of those wings. Lucifer’s forked tongue stopped his mouth as effectively as the scold’s bridle would have, and Kit didn’t care; the angel’s arms clipped and embraced him, lifting him bodily, cradling him against the perfect strength of a chest that might have been carved of warm white marble by some Grecian master. The angel knelt, never breaking the kiss, wings fanning wide for balance, their breeze pulling soft fingers through Kit’s hair as Lucifer drew him down to straddle white thighs. Powerful shoulders, deep-rooted muscle nothing like a man’s flexed under Kit’s fingers, sliding beneath soft skin and slick feathers. Kit broke the breathlessness of the kiss to gasp sharply. With one hand he stroked the angel’s belly, wrapped the silken member that dented the flesh of his thigh. The angel shuddered again, as he had when Kit touched his wing. Lucifer drew back, glanced down, and smiled in intimate provocation. Kit’s loins ached as if the regard were a caress.
“Come unto me.” The Devil’s hands clenched on his flanks, lifting him without effort, indenting flesh and coaxing him open. Soft hands, strong. Kit winced in anticipation, wrapped his arms around Lucifer’s neck to bear his weight, for all it seemed as nothing to the angel. Witchcraft,he thought, how cunning, how quaint.A silent chuckle shivered his belly, breath becoming an expectant whimper as Kit braced himself for a pain that never arrived. If He hurts you, silly boy, it will not be out of carelessness
It came not as a thrust, or as the lingering accommodation that gentleness had almost seduced Kit into expecting. But one massive downsweep of those incredible wings hurled them upright one, and then another, as the pale perfect mouth found Kit’s again and Lucifer stood in a fluid arc, and Kit was pierced.
“Christ,” Kit whispered, impassioned, hearing his own awe and fear, disbelief thick in his voice.
“Tis not Christ thou wilt bear on thy back.” Amusement, wryness. Wrathful irony, almost a lover’s teasing. Lucifer’s hair tumbled down around Kit’s face, bearing his smoky, bitter, musky scent.
This is not real. This is not happening. There is no Devil. There is no Hell. God is love, and God judges not what is done in love Christ, Christ, Christ… . Rapt. Speaking in tongues. Possessed. Yes, possessed.
“God.” Warm arms and wings supported him. “God judges. And He is not pleased with His creation, for it can never echo His perfection and His will. He does not wish thy love. He commands thine obedience and fear. The lord thy God i sa jealous God, and thou wilt have no Gods before him.”
Bitterness? Sorrow? Oh, but that mouth on his throat, on his breast. The effortless puissance bearing him up. A decade and more of rationalization stripped away by that calm, gentle voice in his mind. Passion on him again, divine will, and remembering the agony that had come with the realization that whatever God had made of Christofer Marley, that Marley was a thing whose love the God of the Church would never return. A calling. The craving they named vocation. Put away now with other childish things. Raped away from God, and So this is what Leda felt, which made him giggle. Kit leaned into the embrace, trusting himself to those powerful arms, body decisive while his heart struggled and tore itself in his breast.